All content by Mark is listed below:
I got my first teaching job in 1984, working at a large boy's secondary school in El Obeid, Sudan. This experience made it very clear to me that there's a lot more to teaching English than just being able to speak the language!
Saturday - April 5th, 2014
In this plenary, David Graddol delved into the murky world of the English teaching business, where the imperative is firmly profit over people. He asks, ‘Who benefits from English teaching?’, and answers, ‘Follow the money!’. On that basis, it’s clearly not teachers and learners who benefit.
Saturday - April 5th, 2014
Michael Hoey’s was a compelling argument in favour of teaching language lexically, because that’s how language is, and that’s also how it’s learnt and mentally stored. On the linguistics angle, he endorsed the work of Michael Lewis and his ´lexical approach´, and on the pedagogic side, he recommended the ´Monitor Model´of Stephen Krashen.
- Materials design
- Syllabus design
- Grammar
- Vocabulary
Saturday - April 5th, 2014
I think of the world of ELT as a map divided into four quarters – the content of what we teach – the English language; the reasons why the students are learning – their needs; how people learn – pedagogy; and the procedures we use to teach – methodology.
Wednesday - March 5th, 2014
Here's a nice little team game to raise awareness of how spelling and pronunciation differ. The teams have to reverse words such as 'main' to get 'name'.
Sunday - March 2nd, 2014
IATEFL Pronsig's "Speak Out" magazine 50th Edition celebratory issue is just out, and what an amazing collection it is. Contrats to Robin Walker for getting it together! I'm very proud to have an article in it myself, entitled "A Map of Pronunciation Teaching". Here's the map and excerpts from the intro and conclusion of the article.
Event date:
Thursday, April 3, 2014 - 14:00
Location:
Harrogate International Conference Centre, Queen's 5 (sesssion2.4)
This workshop is part of the IATEFL pronSIG day, session 2.4 (14:05 - 14:50). Rhythm and sentence stress are vital in creating meaning, yet they can be daunting and confusing for both teachers and students.
Wednesday - January 29th, 2014
For awareness of pronunciation features including sounds and spelling, and features of connected speech, for B1 upwards: put this poem on the board and ask students to read it and work out what it's all about. Here's what happened when I tried: they all looked totally blank. One or two asked for vocab items, like 'gee!', which I then explained.
Event date:
Wednesday, January 22, 2014 - 14:30
In one-to-one pronunciation teaching, we must assess what the individual student needs and find the best way of providing it. We can’t use a pre-determined syllabus or ‘set-piece’ pronunciation materials. Instead, we need to be flexible enough to negotiate and adapt both syllabus and methods. For this, we need to keep three questions in mind:
Wednesday - December 4th, 2013
Have fun in class and raise awareness of how pronunciation affects listening at word level and across words. Find the teacher's notes and worksheet pdf below, plus a video/karaoke of the song, and an audio-only mp3.
Sunday - December 1st, 2013
This is a fun awareness-raising activity based on a video - see below. There is also an audio-only version available to download. See also Yes, today and Hay chewed.
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